"Right now I’m sitting in China, having my first conscious censorship experience. I’m sure I’ve experienced censorship before – I have no illusion that the media in any country is unbiased – however this time it’s a lot more noticeable.

I try to access www.wikipedia.org, no luck. Pages on human rights in China, again, ‘operation has timed out.’ I google for ‘Tibet facts’ and find a number of sites. Unfortunately, many of them are blocked, although some I can thankfully access (www.tibet.com). I am interested to learn from one of the sites I can access (provided kindly by the Chinese government) about China’s ‘peaceful liberation of Tibet.’ It’s obviously not full censorship, otherwise I would never be able to access www.tibet.com. Sites on the Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre are almost universally inaccessible. In fact, Adam suspects that he might have been the cause of the Wikipedia block, as he was downloading videos of the massacre just before it was blocked last week!

China is in a fascinating situation right now. With a rapidly growing economy, it is the modern era’s gold rush. Hopeful businesspeople from around the world are flocking here, driven by the numbers – 1.3 billion people, the largest car market, cigarette market, mobile phone market, one of the largest emerging middle classes, and one of the largest exporters/importers. It is also experimenting with democracy, with ‘The Party’ venturing into things such as local government elections.

And in this milieu China’s hope of a ‘harmonious society.’

¶ 1:30 AM